


The Case of the Great Annoyance

by MortuaryBee



Series: Hemostasis [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Johns POV, Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MortuaryBee/pseuds/MortuaryBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is more than John is prepared for, and he's not sure he wants any of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Case of the Great Annoyance

**Author's Note:**

> John's pov of The Black Dog of Baker St.
> 
> Not brit picked. Let me know if there are issues.

Three weeks. It’s been three weeks of this and you’ve had enough for a good long time. 

The general moping after a case, the long flailing limbs sprawled in whatever position they happen to fall in, the 16 hour dead to the world black-outs, those are all par for the course. And to be honest, most of the time, they’re welcome. God knows you need a break after a week and a half of non-stop manic activity centered on murder and a shorter then usual temper. 

You’ve got it down so well there’s practically a post-case routine. It differs from time to time but it’s essentially always the same thing: Water. Paracetamol. Sleep. Tea. More paracetamol. Biscuits if amiable enough. If not leave them and wait. More tea. Paracetamol. Tea. Small meal if possible. Repeat depending on severity of exhaustion. Increase food intake gradually and bask in the calm silence whenever possible because it won’t last long. It never lasts long.

Until that is, it does. And, you have no idea what to do with it.

It’s not as if you’ve never had to deal with depression before, there was plenty of that in the front, but there was no time. It was shoved to the side and piled away for so long that by the time it could be dealt with most had already come to terms with it or settled nicely into their denial and that was fine. The only time you've had to deal with depression outside of the war, and occasionally yourself, was with Harry and that was a bloody disaster. You don’t even like your own therapist, you’re not about to become someone elses.

You start like you normally would, essentially by enjoying a bit of late night telly as he less than elegantly flops onto the couch before you pass out a few feet away in your chair some hours later and awake to a stiff neck and a sore back but still better than you’ve felt in a day or two. Not surprisingly, the new day is greeted with a loud snore to your left, probably what woke you up, and you glare at the culprit accusingly for a moment before resigning yourself to defeat and get up to make breakfast. Or at least you’re going to get up to make something. At some point in the near future. You sigh and glare at your eyelids instead. 

Tea. 

Tea’s always good, even if it can wait a minute.

After some moments, or minutes, or possibly an hour, you may have fallen back asleep, you find yourself walking across to the kitchen. Making as much noise as humanly possible to enact revenge only leaves you with a slightly worse headache and the slow tugging of annoyance as your flatmate simply huffs in his sleep and rolls over at the disturbance. No, he tries to roll over. You look back and realize he’s only just barely turned his head and if he keeps that position up for much longer he’s either going to be much worse off than you when he wakes or just on-

You chuckle and consider leaving him there, but the likely amount of complaints when he wakes makes you shudder so you put down your fork and haul his 190cm arse back onto the too-short sofa and call it an accomplishment. You are thanked with an unconscious slap in the face, roll your eyes, tell the git what he is, and go back to your breakfast. You ponder leaving him some but by the way he’s ran himself down this time you have a feeling it’ll be cold long before he wakes up. 

For the first few days after that you figure it’s just taking slightly longer than usual. It’s happened before and he really did wear himself out. To be honest it's enjoyable if the smallest bit worrying, but by the weekend you notice him sleeping less and moping more until you walk down the stairs Monday morning on your way to work and he clearly hasn’t slept, probably hasn’t eaten and is wearing the same damn robe he’s been in since that first night. 

The man with a fucking sock index hasn’t showered in nearly a week and fuck all if that makes a lick of sense to you. This makes you angrier than it should have and to be fair at that point it’s mostly because you don’t want to go to work, but as interesting as that case was it’s not quite enough to make the rent so you ignore the dramatic sack of silk on the couch as you make your way out into the real word with real fucking people and thank god for small miracles because it’s not actually raining tod-

Shit.

Grumbling and wet you return, for the third, fourth, and fifth nights in the row to the same thing, but you’re trying. You really are. You’ve even brought an assortment of pastries, all his favourites, courtesy of Mrs. Hudson who’s also worried sick but too polite to ever say so directly, and he just gives you this look. This horrible, superior, haughty look that holds absolutely nothing with how pathetic the man beneath it has become and it makes you angrier than you thought you could get at the moment. He’s weak and frail and more sombre than you’ve ever seen him and he doesn’t even know it. He honestly can’t tell that he doesn’t have the upper hand. Frustrated, you put down the pastries as he speaks, and that would be a step if anything but of course it's not. 

For the first time in almost three weeks Sherlock Holmes speaks. Real, structured, sentences. Purely to spite you. Your surprise just makes it worse. He speaks in some drawn out almost ancient sounding language. Swedish maybe? Icelandic? Why in the hell would he even know Icelandic? Whatever it is you’ve never heard it before and you feel like he’s almost holding out on you. 

You’ve heard bits and pieces of German, French, Spanish, Italian, all the Latin root languages and even a bit of Finnish when he’s on a case or just talking to himself around the flat. You’ve concluded that he doesn’t think in words so much as details or concepts or situations and strings them together before translating them into whatever language he deems appropriate. The fact that there’s more after all this time just reminds you that really you don’t know much about the man, he knows everything about you, and yet you can’t get through an afternoon without wanting to punch him at least once. That train of thought just segues into more and more instances of wanting to harm him in one way or another and now you’re just angry that you’re angry at nothing at all. You stop and pinch the bridge of your nose to get back on track.

Calm. Breathe. He just wants you to leave. You know what he’s doing; he’s been doing it non-stop for over a week now. He’s baiting you. He just wants you to leave. Don’t. 

Instead you try and snag his interest. 

“There’s some leftover risotto in the fridge if you want any.” Oh, come on you can do better than a pile of soggy rice next to... Actually, next to nothing. Cheese maybe? Milk? There's something so completely wrong about that that prompts you into trying again. 

“Mycroft called. Told him to go to hell.” Still nothing. Not even a glint in his eye. 

“...Sorry about the socks. I can never get it quite right.” You're grasping at straws, but that one earns a strange look and you wonder if he’s even been to his room in the past month. He had to have been though right? You know he’s moved a bit because you’ve heard the toilet flush and distracted, you realize may have been listening for it. 

You continue along this line for a while not quite sure where it’s taking you or if he’s even listening but at least you can say you tried. And some minutes later, after talking to the bored, disinterested, face of your friend he manages to crack the most deranged smile you’ve seen in a while. For someone who claims to not understand sarcasm he sure uses a lot of it and yet somehow, you are reassured by this. You sigh, take the hint, throw in a few choice insults and “idiots” in to restore normalcy and go to bed with a better outlook for tomorrow.

You wake up and hope for the best, or at least a little better, but prepare for the worst and he hasn’t moved. Only he has moved, but not much and you see the bags under his eyes and the greasy sheen of his hair. But, you also see the cold tea stain on the mug next to him that you’re fairly sure isn’t entirely from evaporation and significantly more crumbs on the plate next to him then there were when you left.

You do notice things. You’re not nearly as stupid as he says you are and you’re pretty sure most of that is for show at this point, but you don’t mention those things because, you? You actually know when to give people their space and you can tell he needs plenty of it. So you continue your morning routine and head to work without mentioning or saying anything other than a short “Morning.” as you close the door behind you.

You also don’t make any kind of fuss about announcing your arrival. You stopped doing that soon after you moved in seeing as he either heard you coming from down the street or was miles away and talking to an empty room before you even got there. You set your coat on it’s hook, shiver, and somewhat longingly remember your umbrella snug in it’s holder at work. There’s an almost peaceful air to the room that you're hesitant to disrupt as you light a small fire and quickly run upstairs to change. 

Upon returning your flatmate is laying on the opposite end of the couch which in retrospect was an accomplishment of it’s own. You settle down to read the newspaper and warm up a bit until you realize you’ve read the same passage three times in the past ten minutes. You wonder what’s distracting you until you look up. He’s staring. He’s likely been staring since you sat down and you just hadn’t acknowledged it. It’s funny what you get used to. 

“You know most people use words when they want to communicate.” You weren’t expecting a response, but you're also surprised by how angry that makes you. You’re almost disappointed by it. Not the lack of response as much as the predictability of the silence itself. And suddenly you realize why and that's when it gets worse. That's when you stop pretending.

He’s almost become mundane. Boring. Plebeian. Lazy. All the things he hates and he’s so much more than that. You want to drag it out of him. You stare back for a moment, unsure, before deciding to do the only thing you can do. You ruin it. You disrupt the moment as much as possible purely to get a response, any kind of response at all. You treat it for what it really is: a dismissal and a defeat. 

And You yell. 

You yell yourself hoarse and you don’t care because he’s had this coming for longer than either of you have realized until now. Why doesn’t he pull himself together? He’s your friend, dammit. He’s your best mate and he’s making you watch him tear himself apart without lifting a damn finger and how selfish is that? You tell him to think of someone else for once his life and you know it’s not that simple. You know he doesn’t do it on purpose, doesn’t feel it on purpose, but it’s hard for you too. Looking back, you may have even thrown a suggestion for therapy in amongst the pleas vaguely disguised as insults and that makes you one hell of a hypocrite, but it doesn’t make it any less valid. 

Somewhere in the back of your brain you wonder how many times he’s heard this speech as you see something like pain flash across his face almost as if it’s an accusation of sickness, of disability, of abnormality, of freakishness, rather than a friend trying to help, but the moment’s gone and you’ll never really be able to tell for sure. You doubt he would answer if you asked and if he did you’re not sure you would believe him anyway.

Throwing the now crumpled newspaper to the side, you barely remember to grab your coat as you stomp your way out of the flat, ignore Mrs. Hudson’s frantic excuses for his behavior, and slam the front door shut because even you can only take so much.

The rest of the night is a drunken, slurred blur, and you consider calling up Sarah to avoid going back to the flat, but she puts up with enough of your crap at work and while you know you’re always welcome there you also know it’s mostly because she pities you having to deal with this shit and you don’t want to strain the friendship anymore than a past romance already has. You wonder idly what Greg’s doing as you stumble out of the cab, but mostly you’ve just got to take a piss and you're already here so you might as well sleep in your own bed. 

Suddenly, you’re at the top of the stairs; you’re fairly sure they’re your stairs. And, you’re definitely sure Sherlock is still an arse so instead of using his you make the climb past the immobile lump of a man and up to your bathroom and it’s worth it because that puts you that much closer to your bed. You have a fairly uncomfortable, but dreamless, sleep until something loud wakes you an indeterminate amount of time later. You’re halfway through a row with the clock about keeping it down until you realize what it is and damn if that isn’t the best thing you’ve heard all day. You can't bother thinking much past that at the moment and fall back asleep almost immediately, but you haven’t been that excited about hearing a shower run since you got back to the ol' Blighty.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always appreciated.


End file.
